The Super Bowl audience just got a glimpse of the newest genre mutant – a sci fi blended with a Western. Universal recently released the trailer for its $100 million summer 2011 blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens. In this article, the New York Times reports that the trailer’s first showing to a live audience evoked gales of laughter – but it’s not supposed to be a comedy.
According to the trailer, Harrison Ford’s torch-bearing mounted lynch mob is interrupted by laser attack from an alien spaceship. Daniel Craig, playing a Clint Eastwoodesque Man With No Name, awakes with his memory erased by aliens and a futuristic bracelet. Saloon gal Olivia Wilde (House, The OC) is pulled into the sky by alien forces.
It turns out that this isn’t the first Western with space aliens, although Oblivion aimed a lot lower. This 1994 schlockfest starred Andrew Divoff (as the alien Redeye), Richard Joseph Paul, Meg Foster, Isaac Hayes and Julie Newmar, with George Takei as the Jim Beam-swilling town doctor. Amazingly, Oblivion rated a 1996 sequel, Oblivion 2: Backlash.
Here’s the real trailer for Cowboys & Aliens.